


What Happened at the Party

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, exes au, past breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26057914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Five years ago, Caitlin Snow met Cisco Ramon at Barry Allen's annual birthday barbecue.Two years ago, they kissed for the first time at the same party.Last year, they broke up.This year, Caitlin has to see him again - and his new girlfriend.Written for Killervibe Week 2020, Breakup theme.
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20
Collections: Killervibedaily Events





	What Happened at the Party

When she saw the familiar little green car, Caitlin felt her stomach lurch. Her friend Iris, who'd driven up at the same time as her, gave her a worried glance. "You gonna be okay?"

"Fine!" Caitlin said breezily. "Fine."

"Uh . . . huh," her friend mumbled. "Look, if you just want to stay for a little while, Barry would totally understand."

"It's been a year since Cisco and I broke up," Caitlin said. "We dated for a year. You know there's that formula where you grieve the end of a relationship for half the length of time the relationship lasted?"

"I mean, that's like a guideline, really, " Iris said.

"Okay, a guideline. By that guideline, I'm well beyond the grieving period and I'll be just fine."

"If you say so."

The door opened and Barry lit up, swooping in to kiss Iris. Caitlin, well used to their grand romantic gestures, waited patiently until they came up for air. "Hi, Barry," she said. 

"Hi," he said, eyes zeroing in on the dish she carried. "Oooohhhh. Pie?"

"Mmhm. Chocolate peanut butter."

"Nice," Barry said. He clapped his hands like a preschool teacher. "Okay! So! Fun fact. Cisco's here."

"It's okay," Caitlin said. "I saw his car."

"And he brought somebody."

Caitlin's stomach dropped.

"Wait," Iris said, holding up a hand. "This is Cisco. He's friendly. He's probably introduced you to half the people here today. Did he bring somebody or did he _bring somebody?"_

Barry looked baffled for a moment. "Whichever one means he has a new girlfriend?"

Caitlin felt her stomach go ice-cold.

"Oh shit," Iris said. "Babe, you didn't tell me he was dating someone new."

"He said it's only been a couple of weeks, so they're all kissy and huggy and snuggly -"

Iris hissed at him and turned to Caitlin. "Should we hate her? We can hate her."

"No," Caitlin said. "I'm sure she's very nice. Cisco's always had good taste in partners, mostly." She hesitated.

"This isn't a Lisa situation," Barry said promptly. "I checked. No Lisa vibe."

"See?" Caitlin said. "No Lisa vibe. What's she like?"

"Uh, her name is Kamilla, and she's like a photographer, I think? Oh, and she's vegan. That's all I got."

Caitlin mustered up a smile. "Great."

Barry cocked his head. "Great, like, you think she sounds awful and that's great? Or -"

"Look, I still care about Cisco and I want him to be happy. So great means great. I'll go out there and I'll say hello, and I'll meet her, and it'll be - "

"Great?" Iris suggested.

"Fine," Caitlin said firmly.

They looked at her doubtfully.

"I can handle this, guys, I promise. It won't be like last year. Thank you for the heads-up, Barry." She lifted her pie. "Usual place?"

"Yeah, you know where it is," he said, waving her through. 

He turned to Iris. "You think this is going to be okay?"

"Hard to say," she said. "And by the way, honey, we need to work on your definition of fun fact."

* * *

Caitlin dropped off her pie at the dessert table and circulated through the party, smiling and greeting people she knew. She chatted with someone about their new dog, another person about their job, a third person about the weather.

The whole time, some internal radar was zeroed in on the man across the backyard. Who he was talking to. How he laughed. The bright smile on his face.

How his arm had never left its spot around the waist of the cute girl cuddled up to his side.

As far as she could tell, he didn't even know she was here.

Which was fine by her.

"Hmmm?" she said, vaguely aware that someone had asked her a question. 

"I said I'm surprised you came," Sara repeated. "After what happened last year."

"Nice," said her girlfriend. 

"What? I'm just saying. It was kind of a blowout."

Caitlin grimaced. "I know. Cisco and I had been on the rocks for a few weeks but that was - " She shook her head. "We should have saved that fight for home." She gripped her elbows and raised her chin. "But we agreed, after we broke up, that we wouldn't put Iris or Barry in the middle of things and we could be cordial to each other, which is what we're doing."

"Okayyyyy," Sara mumbled and took a drink.

It wasn't as if their breakup was the only thing that had ever happened at Barry's annual birthday bash, Caitlin thought, making her excuses and going off to say hi to someone else. She and Cisco had also met here, five years ago. The click had been immediate, almost audible. They'd made plans to hang out within minutes of meeting, had been fast friends by the end of the week.

And two years ago, they'd kissed for the first time - there, around the side of the house where it was quiet and green and smelled like roses. 

But Sara was right. Last year, it had all fallen apart. 

Sometimes Caitlin tried to track where or how their relationship had collapsed. After all, they'd been good friends for three years before they started dating. But what had been so good at the start had turned bad so gradually that before she knew it they were fighting more than they were talking and the thought of him made her stomach knot instead of bringing a smile to her face. 

Then she'd said those terrible words, under that tree right there, where she'd dragged him so they wouldn't be fighting in the middle of the party: "You know what, maybe I don't even want to be with you anymore."

And he'd said the equally terrible words: "Maybe I don't either."

Then it had been all icy silences and stiff texts letting him know that his stuff was on her porch and he could leave hers in its place. Such an awful end to something that had been the best part of her life for so long. Sometimes she thought she missed the friendship as much as she missed the romantic relationship.

The smell of the grill tempted her in its direction, and she was almost there when she realized with a lurch of horror that Cisco and his new girlfriend - what was her name? Kamilla, that was it - were already walking up. 

She thought about running in the other direction.

But this would have to happen sometime, and she was hungry, and it was best to get it over with now instead of later. Especially since later, it might be just them, and she didn't know if she could grit her teeth and act cordial without other people around them. At least it was just Barry, who was running the barbecue grill, and if she slipped up he wouldn't blame her.

"Hey, Barry," Kamilla said. "Can you put on a veggie dog for me?"

Cisco hugged her closer. "Go ahead and put one on for me too."

She turned a beaming face toward him. "Babe! You don't have to."

"Yeah, babe, but I wanna kiss you later and you don't like the taste of meat."

She giggled. "Baaaabe."

"Hey, Caitlin," Barry said rather loudly. "Your usual?"

"Yes, thank you," she said, pretending not to notice that Cisco had jerked like someone had tasered him. "Oh, Cisco, hi. I was wondering if I'd see you here today."

Barry coughed, although that could have been some smoke getting blown in his face, and tossed a turkey patty next to the two veggie dogs.

"Hey, Caitlin," Cisco said. Was it her imagination, or did he grip Kamilla's waist a little tighter? "When did you get here?"

"A little while ago," Caitlin said. She smiled at Kamilla. "Hi, I'm Caitlin."

"Kamilla," Cisco's new girlfriend said, smiling back. "So how do you know each other?"

Cisco jumped in. "She’s - ah - she's an old - we dated for about a year."

Clearly, this was new information to Kamilla, from the way the smile on her face went rigid for a split second. But Caitlin had to give her props for recovery. "Hi, Caitlin," she said. "Nice to meet you. So when was this? In high school?"

"Nope," she said. "We broke it off - what, Cisco, about a year ago now?" She was proud of herself for the breeziness in her tone. 

"Mmm, yeah, about that," he said, as if he hadn't stormed out of this exact party and she hadn't gone inside to cry in the bathroom for an hour. 

"Oh," Kamilla said, sounding only a little bit strangled. 

Had he seriously not warned her that Caitlin was going to be here? Or maybe he hadn't given it, or her, a single thought since they broke up. Caitlin considered glaring at him, but thought it might get misinterpreted.

"Well!" Kamilla said. "It's nice to meet you."

"You too! How did you meet?"

"Oh, he came into the bar where I work," Kamilla said, beaming at Cisco. "I thought he was going to spend the whole night hitting on college girls but he spent it talking to me."

"So you're a bartender?"

"Day job," Kamilla said. "I'm actually a photographer."

"You should see her work," Cisco said. "It's really artistic."

"That's so interesting!" Caitlin said. "Do you sell any?"

"Just a few prints online, a little stock photography, you know. But I'm hoping to get a show someday. So, what do you do?"

"Oh, I'm a research scientist," Caitlin said.

"Oh," Kamilla said rather faintly. Was she bored or intimidated? Caitlin had gotten both. "Neat! Researching what?"

"My focus right now is on gene therapies that can hopefully stall or reverse the progress of multiple sclerosis."

Cisco's eyes lit. "Seriously? That's great, I know you wanted to get into that area."

Warmth spilled through her chest, and she smiled at him. He'd always been like this, even at the end. "Yes, I was really happy to get assigned to that project."

"How is your dad doing these days?"

"He's using his cane a lot more lately, but he's also on a new medication that's really helping with his fatigue." She glanced at Kamilla and explained, "My dad has MS."

"Oh, I'm _sorry,"_ Kamilla said in that particular hushed, funereal way people had when they'd never had to think about chronic illness even once.

Caitlin kept her smile pasted on. "It’s okay. He's had it all my life. It's just something we've always lived with, as a family." 

She thought about asking after Cisco's parents, but at that moment, Barry chirped, "Veggie dogs up!" 

He held out two plates to Cisco and Kamilla, their dogs bunned up and ready to go. "Caitlin, it's going to be a few more minutes for yours."

"Oh, sure," Caitlin said. "That's fine."

"Let's go hit the potluck table, babe," Cisco said.

"Oh yes!” Kamilla cried, with outsize enthusiasm given that she probably couldn’t eat ninety percent of the offerings. “Caitlin, it was nice to meet you."

"You too!" Caitlin said, and turned toward Barry. "So how is life at CCPD these days?"

He chatted with her about his job for a moment or two, then said in a low voice, "So that was okay."

"Sure," she said.

He looked sympathetic. "You want cheese?"

"No, I'm all right." She picked up a plate and held it out for her turkey burger, thinking _well, that's over._

She sat on the steps of the deck, next to somebody she'd known in her grad program. They chatted about minor scandals in the science world and she ate her turkey burger in slow, careful bites, not tasting a single one. 

She wandered by the potluck table, stood staring at the side salads and chips and veggie trays that people had brought. She took a carrot stick and laid it on her plate. It looked small and withered and alone.

So unbelievably alone.

She added a celery stick. That didn’t seem to help. She tipped them both into the trash and decided it was time for dessert.

The dessert table was in the kitchen, so she went inside, air-conditioned air washing around her. She wanted sugar, badly. Chocolate, cookies, popsicles, whatever people had brought that would rot her teeth and block the tears.

She checked on her pie and was gratified to see that her little sign saying "Contains peanuts!" was still there, and that one quarter of the pie was already gone. She had made two pies, leaving one at home in the fridge because she'd known how this would go, so she skipped over it and checked out what else was on offer.

Chocolate chip cookies. Individual ice cream cups in a cooler. Mini eclairs in their Costco box, still frozen in the center. A shining chocolate cake in a plastic carrying case. Yes, yes, all of it.

"Hey."

She looked over, then away, quickly. "Hi," she said a little overbrightly, to the parfait she was scooping onto her plate. Shit. He knew she ate sugar when she was upset. But she also liked desserts in general. Maybe she would get away with this.

He was alone. Where was Kamilla? Bathroom, maybe?

_Act natural._

He said, "I, uh - "

"Which one did you bring?" He'd always liked cooking, trying out new things. Sometimes that had been a cause of friction, like when he used every pot in the kitchen and it turned out terrible and they'd wound up going to the drive-thru at nine o'clock at night. 

"There," he said, pointing at a box with a clear plastic lid.

"Donuts!" she said. 

"Mmhm. Kamilla and I made them together."

"Oh," she said.

They'd attempted to cook together a few times but since cooking was how she relaxed and disconnected, it hadn't gone well. 

She opened the box. "Well, I've never had vegan donuts but I'm sure they'll be interesting."

His hand reached past hers and gently closed the box. For a moment, she thought, _you don't even want me_ touching _something you made with her?_ Then he said, "They're not great. Trust me."

“They can’t be that bad."

He shook his head, very solemn. "Vegan donuts are donuts of sadness," he said. "I have learned this."

"I'm sure there are some vegan donuts that are good."

"Proooooobably," he allowed. "But these are not it." He grinned at her, and instinctively, she smiled back.

"Okay," she said, leaving the box closed. 

He chose a mini-eclair for himself and bit it in half. “So are you here with someone?”

She meant to give a simple negative. But the vision of that single lonely, withered carrot stick flashed across her mind and she blurted, “Oh, he was busy today.”

Cisco's fingers clenched on the eclair, splurting some of the cream onto his shirt. “Oh?" he said, grabbing a napkin and wiping at his shirt. "He? Someone I know?"

She swallowed, panic bubbling up. “No, you wouldn't know him. I-I work with him.”

“Another Star Labs workaholic?” 

That shouldn't have stung as hard as it did, but it brought back a nasty echo of their hissed fight over by the barbecue grill last summer, as he'd accused her of never having time for him. Her voice went chilly as she said, "He doesn't work at Star Labs and neither do I anymore. I took a job with Mercury."

"You? You left Star Labs? The most prestigious, well-paid research lab in the Midwest?" he asked, echoing what she’d always recited as reasoning for sticking with her job.

She put her nose in the air. "I decided to value my mental health more than money and prestige. Mercury is much more supportive of their employees' work/life balance."

He blinked. “Wow, that’s - that’s great.”

She picked up a spoon and started scooping something out of a random bowl onto her plate. "So how are you? How are your parents?"

"I'm good," he said. "My parents are . . . they were good, the last I saw them."

She glanced at him quickly. Ever since she'd known him, he'd been at his parents' beck and call, running every time they texted. During that last terrible argument, she'd snapped back that he might see her more if he wasn't constantly canceling dates because his parents needed him. "Did they move?"

"No, I just, ah, I went low-contact with them. Haven't really talked to them in about - " He considered. "About a month now."

"Oh," she said, looking back at her plate. She'd gotten Chester's awful soggy pineapple salad. Ugh. Gross. "Any - um - any particular reason?"

He laughed, but it held no mirth. "They stood me up for my birthday dinner because Dante needed help buying a car." He shrugged. "I kind of figured out that I was never going to be their favorite or their priority. No matter what I did."

She put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well . . ." he mumbled.

"It's their loss," she said. "Is it better for you?"

"Hurts like hell," he said. "But yeah. It's better."

"You seem happy," she said. "I mean, in general."

"I am."

"Good. I'm glad." She realized she was still holding his shoulder, and dropped her hand so she could portion herself some of Iris's ambrosia. "Kamilla's nice," she said brightly.

"She is! Yeah. She is."

"How long has it been?"

"Oh, like a month now? It's really good. I can see this going the distance, you know?"

She felt like she'd swallowed razor blades. "That's great."

He smiled at her. "Hey, you know what, we should double-date."

"We should what?"

"Yeah, me and Kamilla, you and your guy. We should grab dinner together or something. It'll be fun."

"Oh. Well, actually - " He lives in London. He has a moral objection to eating out. He's in training to go to the moon. He - "We really aren't like that."

"Like what?"

"Dating. It's just . . . casual." She smiled. "You know? No strings attached kind of thing. When we've both got some free time and need to blow off steam."

He blinked a few times. "You have a fuck buddy. You?"

She hated that term. It made her skin crawl. Cisco knew that perfectly well, so she just shrugged. "I guess you could call it that." She ate a grape out of the ambrosia, licking it clean of whipped cream and biting it in half. "Sorry, I don't think a nice foursome dinner is in our future. But it was nice seeing you."

She strolled off, hoping like crazy that Cisco didn't mention this fictitious casual sex partner of hers to anybody else.

She made herself do one more circuit of the backyard. She had no idea who she saw or what she said. She was focused on not looking like she was about to run away.

Even though she was.

Iris found her dumping her plate, scraped clean of everything but Chester's salad, into the kitchen trash. "Heard the first face-to-face went down," she said. "You okay?"

"I came, I saw him, we were cordial. I survived," Caitlin said. "And if I go home and dive face-first into a pint of Cherry Garcia and a bottle of wine, that's nobody's business but my own."

Iris put her arm around Caitlin's shoulder and hugged her gently. "That whole grieving process guideline?"

"Whoever made that up is full of shit."

* * *

Some hours later, Barry dropped into the lawn chair next to Cisco, the last slice of Caitlin's pie in a plate on his lap. "Hey, man. You awake?"

"Yup," Cisco said, head tipped back, eyes closed. He swung his beer bottle lightly between his fingers. "Nearly outta beer though."

Barry considered it. "How many of those have you had?"

Cisco tipped it up and drained it. "Almost enough."

"You okay to drive?"

"Mmmmmm. Might hafta crash on your couch. 'Zat okay?"

"You know it is." Barry nudged him. "You don't even have to use the couch. You and Kamilla can use the guest room."

"Mmmmm." Cisco dropped the bottle to the grass. "Sh'left."

"She what? She left?"

"Called an Uber. Kinda mad at me."

"Why?"

"Says I didn't give her a heads-up Caitlin was gonna be here. Or that we dated. Like, c'mon, we've only been together a week and a half. People have exes. It's a thing."

"Still, she might've appreciated the heads-up."

Cisco sighed. "Yeah, I guess, I just . . . I didn't wanna talk to her about Caitlin. It's like, sore. Who wants to talk about their last ex?"

"A lot of people," Barry said. "Especially when she's going to be at the same party, which you knew, cuz I told you."

Cisco sighed again, more heavily. "Okay, yeah, maybe you've got a point. I'll call her tomorrow and apologize. Plus she has nothing to be afraid of. Caitlin doesn't want me back." He swung his bottle again. "So wait, you know who this guy is?"

"What guy?"

"The guy she's dating now."

Barry cocked his head. "Kamilla?"

"Nnnnoooooooooo," Cisco drawled. "Kamilla's dating me. Caitlin's dating . . . some dude. Actually not dating. She's all like, 'ha-ha, we're not like that.' They're friends with benefits or something."

This was the first Barry had heard of it. He opened his mouth to say so when Cisco plowed on with the tenacity of the sloppy drunk.

"Which, what the hell, man? I suggested friends with benefits years ago and she was like no, I don't do that, it doesn't work for me, I need to be in a relationship. Took me another six months to man the fuck up and ask her out for realsies. Who's this guy that's getting her to settle for less than what she wants?" He wagged his finger in the air. "You! You should find out who he is, Bare. You should find out who he is and kick his ass."

Barry smiled at nothing. "You could kick his ass. I mean, you're the one who seems to think it should be done."

"C'mon, I can't do that, then everyone would say I was just jealous. M'not jealous. Just, she deserves better than, than, you know, some dude who just wants to get laid. Just like a friendly ass-kicking. C'mon."

"Okay, maybe."

"I'm not jealous. I'm with Kamilla."

"Mmmmhmm," Barry said, eating some pie. "I can tell. You're totally over Caitlin."

"Totally," Cisco said, and lifted his head, looking around blearily. "Hey, where'd m'beer go?"

FINIS


End file.
